My results for this year's 60-pointer M208 Pure maths were delivered more than two weeks early. I got the grade three I'd expected, not a great score although I managed 83% in the exam, only 2% from a distinction score. It was the coursework that let me down. Now that I'm home and have finally had a chance to see my tutor's comments on M208's assignments I realise that he liked things doing in a certain way, and the way he liked things doing was fussily. Without that knowledge I was always going to score low.
There's a certain irony in that I chose to cycle and study maths because, out of the dozens of subjects taught by the OU, maths is the only one that I wouldn't recommend to study while travelling. The problem - and there is only one problem - is that all assignments must be submitted on paper. Even if you word-process your submission it must still be printed out on to a bit of dead tree and manually posted. And this leads to several difficulties: You need to be far enough ahead with the module so that when posted from the other side of Europe the assignment reaches your tutor by the deadline. Even from modern Spain letters have been known to take six weeks to reach the UK. By being so far ahead it's difficult to find other students with whom to discuss your subject making the distance degree even more solitary than normal. And then when the assignment is marked it goes back to your home address and you don't see the comments that could be, and in my case were, vital. I've studied philosophy, English and science with the OU. Each of these subjects, and I'm assuming every other OU discipline, allows electronic submission of assignments. Such courses would have been much easier to study while cycling. Just not maths. My degree subject. I think you've got the point.
'A delay is not an option.'
In order to compete with traditional universities the OU is moving a lot of its courses to an October start, including all its mathematics modules. This works in my favour because it mostly fixes the above problem. It means I can study over winter, complete all the assignments before I set off and then, while cycling, I just have revision to do. I still need to be ahead of the group to finish the coursework before leaving in spring but not by much. The only downside is that I need to hit a particular European city just at the right moment to do the examination in June. A delay is not an option. I've just started the 30-pointer MT365 Graphs, Networks and Design and it's looking like I'll be sitting down to the exam in Latvia's capital Riga. I'll do the final 90 points when I finish the bike ride at the end of 2013.
Maths-specific issues aside, travel and study isn't easy but why would it be? Studying in your living room isn't easy either. And you need to be very committed and able to manage your time well, but then again so does every other Open University student. But it's a great way to live, stretching your mind as well as your legs. It needn't cost a fortune either. I read about a couple of cyclists who made it from the UK to Turkey living on a budget of less than five pounds a day. A lot of people might want more luxury than a wild camp every night - that's what these lads did - but it can cost as much or as little as you want. It's just a pity that while the travel part can be very cheap, the learning part of it isn't any longer. Thanks Clegg.
So if this year's results mean that 2012 ends with a whimper, there are some other numbers to raise my spirits. The other day I sat down and calculated just how far I'd cycled since March 2011 and how many metres I'd ascended by bike. In total, at the same time as amassing 175 OU credits, I've managed 22,500 kilometres (14,000 miles) on the road and climbed the equivalent of fifteen sea-level ascents of Everest. That's something to drink to this Christmas!
Comments
That is impressive unicyclist!